omg an entry about fandom. i know!

[jlh]

So I have a question for comments, and a poll question for you all.

First, there was a lot of chatter a few weeks ago in those metafandom circles about "sex pollen" stories and matters of consent. Tthe question I always have when I see debate over these stories is: why the sex pollen in the first place? Or whatever irresistable force, biological/chemical/evil person with mind control that you want to use? Why not, I don't know, just have them have the sex?

It may be my non-involvement in SF fandoms, but despite a vague interest in BDSM I don't really get why this trope is so big and then has other people talking about consent issues within it. Also, it seems to me to be the very definition of dub-con, but apparently I'm wrong on that as well. This came up in an entry of someone on my flist, but that doesn't mean I have issues with that entry, just that it made me think about this.

Second, based on my replies to sistermagpie's post about the acafen debate here and here,
[Poll #1287372]

I appreciate any and all input!

Comments

[mahoni.livejournal.com]

A few weeks ago I asked my flist for some smut fic tropes, because I was floundering on a ficathon story and decided that writing a cliche might be fun.

One person gave me a link to this post (), and I think the way the poster introduced the list of slash tropes is kind of telling:

Want to get your two favourite characters to have sex but just can't manage it? What you need is SlashTropesTM!

So on one hand, something like sex pollen is just a handy plot device that writers can use to do the heavy lifting when they don't want to actually go to the trouble of building a relationship from scratch.

I also think one possible answer to 'why sex pollen specifically' is that if you're writing in a fandom that involves aliens or magic or mad science, then you just have that kind of wacky trope at your disposal, and it's just as usable as anything else, makes just as much sense as a real-world-ish trope and is even a little more colorful.

Also, my understanding is that 'sex pollen' as a trope actually comes from canonical comic books characters (Poison Ivy, for one) who literally do use sex pollen to seduce other characters. That the trope was picked up from that and spread across other similar genres. It may be that its origin offers some kind of, I don't know, legitimacy for some people? To me it's just a goofy trope, one that I don't usually seek out, but one that I think should be handled with care (hence the question of consent being an issue for me).

Related: I used accidentally dosing by alien hallucinogen as a trope in a gen story once, as the plot device which makes a dangerous situation much, much more urgent and potentially fatal. I've always wondered if that was just as much of a cheat as it would be to use an alien hallucinogen as the plot device which causes two (or more) characters to have sex....

[mahoni.livejournal.com]

Okay, weird, I can't edit or delete the above. I wonder if even having a deleted comment associated with it affects what you can do, functionally?

Anyway, yes, the link above is bad! Sorry. Should be:


http://puritybrown.livejournal.com/329923.html

[jlh.livejournal.com]

Thanks! That's really helpful for all of the ways that it puzzled me, like its origin and why/how it's used by writers.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I commented on a sex pollen question today--I think right below your comment. I said it wasn't dubious consent in my mind, meaning that I wouldn't think that warning would fit. So I thought sex pollen would be a better warning, because then anybody who thought it as dub consent would know to avoid it and you wouldn't lose readers like me who would be sad to miss a sex pollen story because I loooooove them.:-D

[jlh.livejournal.com]

I'm pleased that you're on her flist, as she is way cool.

Do you remember there was some whole meta about dub con and the sex pollen trope? It was a few weeks ago. Someone was talking about how none of the sex pollen or I was forced to have sex stories really deal with it as a traumatic event, etc, blah blah blah.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I wonder if I saw that--I can't remember. But you know, I always hate the whole "nobody deals with it as a traumatic event" because that goes back to the whole "stop telling me what my own fantasy is about." If somebody doesn't want to write a story dealing with trauma, they don't have to--and more importantly, if they don't want to write their sex pollen story as a trauma *at all* they don't have to. In my mind I never think of it that way. It's more an embarassing situation that usually someone they trust helps them out with. And the person in question usually is into it, of course, but they're also upfront about that so they both know what's going on.

So in my version there's the sex pollen which causes an issue in one or both of them but there's also total consent, as in "we are both agreeing to do this to deal with this issue." Which could still lead to issues later--maybe one person even would react to it as non-con even while they knew it really wasn't. Because you never know how peoples' emotions are going to go.

What's kind of interesting is now I'm remembering a whole discussion in HP about Merope where people were arguing that what she did to Tom Riddle couldn't be said to be rape at all--basically in their reading she was totally the victim because he left her and that was mean. The fact that he'd been doped up to believe he was in love with her didn't matter because she didn't force him to act on his feelings by marrying her. Whereas in that case I consider it far more dubious consent. In sex pollen the people almost always know what's going on and that's why they can consent. Tom wasn't able to give consent.

[sisterpandora.livejournal.com]

I'm going with yes of course because I didn't know this was an issue, and because saying sex pollen is just fun!

[liviapenn.livejournal.com]

why the sex pollen in the first place? Or whatever irresistable force, biological/chemical/evil person with mind control that you want to use? Why not, I don't know, just have them have the sex?

IMO, sex pollen is just a more explicit version of the traditional romance novel "marriage of convenience" trope, where two people have to get married, maybe without knowing each other very well (or even strongly disliking each other,) but then once they're married, they struggle with their feelings and fall in lust/love.

With "sex pollen," it's the same thing, a reversal of the usual romantic pattern: first the characters have sex and *then* they realize that they're attracted to each other, or have feelings for each other, or both.

There can be something really interesting about a story that shows two characters being forced into an advanced stage in their relationship, or a position of intimacy, and then seeing how they deal with it.